


Crimson

by CaffeinatedPokedex



Series: Conqueredstuck [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, End of the World, F/M, Fight for Your Right to Party, Petstuck, Slow Romance, conqueredstuck, fight for what's left, if any - Freeform, petstuck (reverse)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 18:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3421253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinatedPokedex/pseuds/CaffeinatedPokedex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first five years of human enslavement were when the vast majority of humanity had perished. Your planet had been greeted by an ambassador in the late seventies, and in 2009, Earth was invaded. Four years ago, or three years after the invasion, trolls began taking humans as pets. You are Dave Strider, and this is your story of fighting the good fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first five years of human enslavement was when the vast majority of humanity had  perished. Your planet had been greeted by an ambassador in the late seventies, and in 2009, Earth was invaded.

You’re pretty over it by now. Losing your home.

The trolls had quickly disposed of the humans with genetics that went against their preferences. Any undesirables, really. Any they found to bear undesirable genetic diseases or anomalies. The onset of their terror had been slow at first, but it had been made clear that if you were to rat out an undesirable you could get a one way ticket to a place with hot meals and no radiation poisoning.

Of course you and your Bro had been disgusted by this policy, and if the one who’d turned in a genetic anomaly had one of their own they’d be culled themselves anyways. You had scarlet eyes and your Bro had orange as orange could get. You were in constant danger of being culled; so you wore shades full time, even during the night.

The trolls were far more resistant to radiation than humankind, so it had been a favorite tool of your conquerors to weaken large cities and armies. As a result, fewer and fewer humans betrayed one another. The chance of having cancer and being an anomaly yourself was just too great.

The Earth couldn’t have much vegetation on it anymore. Or people for that matter. You wouldn’t know. You are currently walking buck ass nude down an alien city, set up on one of Alternia’s many colonies. Your body is marked in bruises, breathing is slowly ceasing to be a thing you can do while walking, and you have the words “Cull Me” carved into your back. Not one of your shining moments.

Your ankles are covered in the sticky substance seeping out of your back and various other cuts. You are pretty sure you are leaving a trail, nice and scarlet. You would look down to see, but every time you look down you get vertigo and your sight dissipates momentarily. Probably just the blood loss.

Four years ago, or three years after invasion, however you want to look at it really, humans as pets became popular among troll kind. While repulsed by your kind’s system of reproduction, they found it useful for breeding to get ideal pets. Breeding centers had been set up, and you have just escaped one. Good thing too. Tomorrow they would have processed you and realized your albinism. You would have been culled on the spot.

You’re on your own now, and you know that probably means you’ll be killed soon enough. While many trolls find it amusing to kick the silly human walking down the street, it can’t be long before their superior strength outright kills you. At least you’ll have the dignity of fighting back and not being killed like a lab rat.

Iron, and unfortunately not irony, is choking you, or rather the taste. Blood dribbles down your chin, but you can’t be bothered to care. Your eyes are rimmed in red and purple, and your nose is crooked as all hell, what is some blood going to do to ruin your style?

“Human,” A voice calls out from behind you. It doesn’t even slow your stride. “Human, I am talking to you.”

Lazily lifting your not broken arm to half mast, you give the bird to whatever troll is behind you. You are so done with troll kind. They can kiss your human ass for all you fucking care. All you really plan to do now is keep walking. You have nothing left to live for, so you are going to fucking continue to walk if it kills you, because this is art. One lone Strider saying “Up yours” as he takes his final steps.

Angry footsteps grace your ears before a strong hand grips your arm painfully. “Jesus fuck! My arm’s fucking broken, you asshole!” You turn to the troll, curling your lip in disgust at her yellow fanged grin. It subdues as she breathes in through her nose heavily.

To your surprise, she lets go of the arm and just calmly stands there. She doesn’t even swing. You can’t see in full detail, you’re eyes are too swollen shut, but you can tell she’s teal blood and sports ridiculous red shades. Your ironic shades have been misplaced on your short jaunt of freedom and you miss them already. They were tossed to the ground when you took a brawling punch to the face, and probably smashed shortly after that. Your eyes haven’t been exposed to this much light in a long time and it honestly hurts a little, even if it is nighttime.

“Do you have an owner?”

“Nope,” You flippantly respond, placing your hands on your hips because you really wish you had pockets to put them and, ah it feels so awkward not having anywhere to put them, but you remember too late that you can’t really move your broken arm and your face is spasming in pain-

“Who did this to you?”

“Why the fuck do you care,” You bite out, placing your good hand to your chest, trying to steady out your breathing because fuck is it just you or is it suddenly getting really warm and humid out?

“Animal abuse is wrong and is against the law, and they must be a coward who needs a lesson.”

“Gee, thanks. I’m just going to continue on my merry way as a lowly animal. See ya’.” You turn away and try to walk away, but that hand is grabbing your shoulder again. Despite being about her same height  and pretty muscular if one ignores the malnutrition, you know that she is much stronger than you. At this point in your miserable day, you can’t even fight back if she wants you to stay.

You are at her mercy whether you like it or not.

“Tell me what I wish to know.”

Shrugging the best you can with the death clamp on your shoulder and the broken arm, you cough out,” An olive blood and his cronies, I guess. I don’t know. They beat the shit outta’ me. What does it matter?” You just want her to let you go. How are you supposed to know who did this? They jumped you. You refuse to look back at her as she keeps you captive.

You gasp in shocked pain as her hand moves to slide against the lovely note they left in your flesh. Her fingers glide over every groove and she disapprovingly says,” Come with me.”

“Fuck no.” You know that she’s not holding you any more and that you could get away, but instead you turn to her and continue,” I’m no shit squirming pet and I don’t intend to be.” You’ve lived with escaped pets before and you know it’s no walk in the park. Trolls don’t treat humans like people treat cats and dogs. Or rather, they treat you like horrible monsters who beat their animals.

“If you do not become my pet, you will die.” She doesn’t state this as a threat, but merely a fact.

You practically bristle at this. “I already said no. I may be doomed to die, but at least I still have my dignity.” You say this, but your cheeks feel hollow and your head feels light. You’re already doubting your ability to stay on your feet. “Anyways, take a fucking look,” You say leaning in and opening your eyes the best you can despite how swollen they are. “I’m a worthless mutant, a freak, and none of you racist bastards want me.”

With a cackling grin, the teal blood says,” Yes, well, I may not be a mutant, but that doesn’t make you the only freak around.” With timed perfection, she removes her scarlet shades to reveal ruby eyes. They’re crystallized in a way that makes you doubt it’s natural; they almost look scarred.

You find yourself at a loss of words, and in swirling confusion, you are falling. The blood loss has finally sapped all your badassery for the moment, and you are slipping out of consciousness. You’re vaguely aware that you must have been caught, because you never reach the ground. Then again, you doubt that you’re still conscious, so how would you know at all?

~~

~~

You feel incredibly sluggish as you come to, and a little chilly. The most pathetic of all blankets is propped over you, but it’s not really offering any comfort or heat. Something awkward is constricting movement in your right arm, and it takes you a minute to realize that it’s been set in an alien cast.

Looking about yourself, you find many of your larger wounds have been bandaged, and your chest and back are almost completely wrapped. Letting your gaze swing around the room you’re in, you find it is incredibly dark outside. It must be second night that this planet is famous for.

“You’ve slept a very long time,” a voice says and you scan quickly for the owner to the voice.

It’s the teal blood.

“Not an uncommon side effect of near death experiences,” You shrug off, instantly regretting the action. You are sore as fuck after sleeping on the cold floor in less than perfect health.

“So I was told. Is there anything you require?”

“What?”

“I’m not used to keeping pets. What do you need?”

You debate if you should play along and ask for the essentials you need, or if you should fight for your self-respect since you are about to pirouette right the fuck out of this place because dammit you did not just spend the last seven years running to give up your humanity to these lame ass trolls. The pain in your stomach from not having ate in two and a half days sways you to admit,” Some food all up in here would be a nice start.”

She smiles her creepy toothy smile, and you suppress a shiver; cool kids don’t quake in their nonexistent boots. They do, however, shiver because they are as cold as a kangaroo in Antarctica, and if that doesn’t make sense, it’s because they’re not supposed to be in fucking Antarctica and the people who put them there are fuckasses. “And clothes,” You tag on, finding to your disappointment that you are still in the category of ‘wardrobe malfunction’. At least she had the decency to throw a see-through blanket on you.

“Right, it’s been a long time since I thought about how someone looked,” She says, adjusting her glasses. “Your red blood is just so intoxicating, why would you ever want to put up a barrier around it? Your skin is already doing too good of a job.” Her smile fades to a frown momentarily before returning with her laughter.

You feel violated, but you’re not quite sure how. This chick is messed up, even as trolls go.

Trying to find something else to dwell on, you notice that the walls are covered in drawings. Well apparently her mother- wait they don’t have those, do they?-grub never taught her not to draw on  the walls. “You’re quite the artist,” You comment.

“It tastes delicious.”

“Um...”

“I’m blind. Have been for over half my life. I can ‘see’ by smell and taste.”

That explains her comment about your blood and why many of the pictures seem to be half washed away. Gross. “Okay, well that’s special, but where’s this food I asked for?” You’re not in the mood to bond with your captor. If she is going to hold you here, you expect a damn meal for your trouble.

“You’re pretty rude.”

“Says the ladytroll whose race is responsible for my world’s slaughter and enslavement. Feel real bad forgetting my manners around you,” You say.

“Well, I suppose as long as you feel bad about it...”

“That was fucking sarcasm.”

“Human sarcasm is so weird.” She’s leaving the room, and you wonder if you’re supposed to follow or not. Deciding food is worth the troll’s company, you attempt to get up, but the excruciating pain you’re in decides otherwise. Drawing sharp breaths, you lay back down and scrunch up your eyes. This is too unbelievably painful to be real. This hurts more than when you were in fourth grade and got in a fight with some middle schoolers (which you won, just fyi) or when you and your Bro used to strife to relieve stress.

You and your Bro...

Your breathing catches painfully; you have to work really hard to get your poker face back online before she returns.

You realize that this is kind of a quintessential example of why humanity fell so easily into pethood and groan lightly to yourself. Just the promise of food is enough to make you give up your morals and wait for the troll to come back when you should be trying to find a way to escape despite the vertigo you are undergoing.

All of this reflection is tossed out the window as food reaches the senses. The smell that pervades the air before she can be seen is one that causes a less than pleased emotional response in you. However, you couldn’t really give a fuck about your own personal feelings right now if it means getting sustenance in you.

A black t-shirt obviously fitted for a female and some black slacks are tossed on you and you don’t even have to lift them up to blankly state,” If you think these are going to fit me, you are sadly mistaken.”

She kneels beside you and sets the bowl of food down. “It’s all I have that isn’t my work clothes. It will have to do.”

You stare up at her, and watch her assumably stare at you. Those shades are doing a fine job of obstructing your view. Her hand reaches for you, and you can’t help but flinch away from a troll, but relax as she places the back of her hand to your forehead. She bites her lip in an almost... humanish nervous way...? Giving her a few seconds to explain, and then realizing she’s not going to, you ask,” What.”

“I think you might be running a fever... I don’t really know.” You quirk an eyebrow. How do you not know? You remember a bit too late for your ‘really...?’ look that trolls have different body temperatures depending on their blood color, and your blood isn’t on their scale. “You’re hotter than... well the only other I’ve known to have your blood color.”

This earns another eyebrow quirk. You’re assuming that she isn’t talking about humans, and as far as you know trolls can’t have red blood. The closest they get is like brown or something. You don’t really know, but what ev’s.

You still feel cold as fuck, but you know that’s probably just another sign that you’re running a fever or some shit, because you also feel too ill to raise your head on your own. Great. She doesn’t even know what temperature you’re supposed to be, and she’s going to be your sole care provider while you’re trying to recover from what should have probably killed you.

Whatever. You don’t care. You just want that grub stew. Oversized bugs as food be damned. You want it now. “Yo, ladytroll. Gimme the food.” She frowns and shoves the bowl into your hands and gets to her feet.

“Anything else, prince of all princes?”

“I like to think I’d be more of a knight.” She is handing out sass, and you aren’t about to fall behind.

“I don’t see where it matters,” She bites out, obviously irritated with you, before gritting her teeth and facepalming. “I walked into that one.”

Your grin, even as you lay there on the ground with nothing but a thin blanket for modesty and looking like you’ve survived a zombie-apocalypse, is smug enough that you are sure even she can see it.

A little flustered at losing so easily, though to be fair she hadn’t anticipated such intelligence from an animal, the teal blood ascends and comments,” I have important court duty to get to.” before quickly absconding.

Your smile diminishes the second she’s out of sight. It was difficult keeping your expression strong and not exhausted, though you reflect that your effort was pointless because she’s blind. Letting the bowl lay back on the ground, you try to push yourself up to your elbows, but even that is too much. The dizzying spiral of nausea that takes hold of you coupled with popping of more than one injured joint makes you second guess whether you want that food after all.

Despite being much less than avid for the stew, you know that you should take advantage of eating while you can. Pulling the bowl with you, you crawl to the closest wall and use it to stabilize you as you once again try to sit up. This, at least, proves more worth your time, and you finally are upright. Grabbing the stew, you carefully ration out what you are going to eat now. You have no way of knowing how early she will return.

You also haven’t seen this much food at once, even if it’s icky troll shitty food, for well over a year. Overeating is a serious concern with your recent diet and you don’t need to add that to your list of physical ailments. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on this project for almost two years now, and I finally feel like I have enough to start posting. It's going to be told over the course of a few interconnecting stories. I really hope you've enjoyed the first chapter. Any feedback you have would be great!


	2. Chapter 2

You think it’s almost daylight when you hear the teal blood return. You wait for her to enter before complaining,” You could’ve at least told me where the bathroom was before leaving. God, I mean, like first rule of having a puppy is leave some fricken newspaper. You’re really lucky I’m no baby chihuahua or you’d be coming home to a present left by yours truly.”

You’re not kidding; your bladder’s about to explode and you’re sitting with crossed legs to keep from bursting.

She laughs at your considerate pain. “It’s right there,” She chuckles, pointing to an open door, “first on the left.”

“That thing’s a toilet?! It looks ready to make me into stew.”

She giggles again- you get the feeling she was a troll hyena in her past life- and says,” I wouldn’t stay there too long.” You’re not quite sure whether she’s joking or not.

None the less, you dart to the room to relieve yourself. Well, you dart the best you can. You’re so sore even though you tried stretching all night long. You actually feel a little ill from how fast you tried to move. For a moment you think you might need to add another reason to why you need the bathroom, but luckily your stomach settles.

When you return, her lips are twisted in a small pout. “You didn’t eat all your food.”

“Nope,” You say flippantly with a minimal shrug. You couldn’t. You did try to eat most of it. You don’t really feel like explaining yourself though, despite her seeming a little worried.

The troll awkwardly lifts a bag and says,” I, uh, bought some clothes for you. And-” She digs for something, bringing out an object reminiscent of a rubix cube. “My moirail suggested this kind of toy for sub-sentient species.”

You were getting tired of relying on a tied blanket for modesty, but you cringe to think of what the blind troll picked out for you. Even with no other humans to impress, you’d still like to keep your swag flowing.

When she hands you the bag, you accept it and peer in. The contrasting teal sweater and candy red jean shorts hurt your already sensitive eyes and you comment,” What’s with the clashing colors?” They’re not the worst together, but you’re going to feel like a giant pair of 3D glasses.

Diffidently smoothing her skirt, which you now notice is almost the same exact teal with red accents, while averting her blind eyes, she says,” Oh, I thought they smelled pretty good together. My moirail helped me pick them out. They’re for 150 pound humans, so I don’t really know if they’ll fit well. I couldn’t really compare size.”

“Yeah, okay. Don’t care,” You brush off. Damn if you’re going to make having a pet enjoyable for her. Maybe she’ll just get tired of your shit and fucking let you go. You kind of feel bad when her face momentarily scrunches up into an upset expression, but you don’t let her sense your guilt.

“Imma go change then,” you say, looking for an excuse to get out of her sight- or rather smell?- before your poker face breaks.

“Wait! Uh, we never really introduced ourselves. I’m Terezi, Head Legislacerator of the Delta System Off World Court of Alternia.” She waits until it becomes obvious that you have no intention of partaking in this exchanging of names. “Aren’t you going to say your name?” You swear her mouth twists into a question mark pout.

“I was under the impression that most ‘pets’ were named by their lame owners,” you answer, with not a single fuck to give.

“Well, I was under the impression that most humans already had names. I was being polite,” she snaps back.

You give her the silent treatment as you leave and take the clothes into the creepy as shit bathroom. The poofy sweater seems pretty comfortable for how ugly it looks. It kind of reminds you of a sweater poor frufru dogs got forced to wear. The scarlet shorts are filled with more pockets than a 90’s antihero. When you slip them on, you pause before forcing on the hideous sweater, gaze stuck on the mirror.

Your chest and ribs ache even more as you remember all the wounds under the bandaging. Turning around, you twist the best you can to see your back. The bandages covering the expanse of your shoulders are pretty ruddy, and you wonder if the troll knows anything about first aid and wound treatment.

If you had to guess, you’d probably say these should have been changed even before you woke, but you guess you’ll just take care of it now. You survived long enough with your Bro that this will be simple. You can change out bandages in you sleep. You had to be able to in the final push of the troll’s conquering. It was live action _Fall Out New Vegas_ in your neck of the woods.

Your back is sticky with congealed blood and you have to peel the old bandages off. You stare blankly at the mirror as you reveal the lovely message one of your attackers left for you. That is definitely going to scar; they made sure to go deep enough to mar the dermis and even some muscle.

As you contort yourself to reach the middle of your back, you gasp in pain and drop to your knees. Your eyes sting with held back tears at the gripping pain surging through your spasming back. You have to focus on your breathing, the wind was so knocked out of you. You’re caught off guard by the knocking at the door.

“You okay?”

“Go away,” you huff, trying to keep your voice at a respectable not shrill tone.

“I need something to call you so I can tell you to open up this door.”

Your pain tolerance is pretty high, but  you’re failing to grasp the flow of time, because what seems like seconds of excruciating pain has been long enough of waiting and she’s announcing,” I’m coming in.”

Wincing up at her, you’re fumbling over a response. It comes out marginally slurred, but you manage,” You wish you could come up with something as cool as my name to call me.” Maybe you’re a little late with the comeback, because she doesn’t even seem concerned with names anymore and is half way in the creepy bathroom.

“What on Alternia are you doing?” She’s asking as she rushes over and kneels beside you. Inhaling, she offhandedly comments,” Wow, you smell _really_ good.”

Deciding to ignore the creepiness of that statement, you explain,” Was trying to switch out my bandages. They were old… causes infection.”

She’s petting your head, maybe trying to soothe you, but you swat her hand away. You feel bad that you used your heavy casted arm, because you think you caught her fingers when she recoils and cradles her hand. Well… You feel bad… but not that bad since she’s trying to play you like a fucking cat… at least you try justify in your head that way.

“You should’ve asked. I can help.”

“Got the pet care skills of a circus manager. You should have seen they needed changing before leaving for work and your playdate.” Wow. You’re not terrible at guilt tripping when you put your mind to it.

“I can’t see,” She whimpers softly. Damn. She’s not bad at guilt tripping either.

Hesitating, you say,” I can’t really reach my upper back.”

Sitting down with a huff, you startle at the cool touch of her fingers as she starts at your lower back. Despite several moments of contact between you, you keep forgetting the blue bloods rest at about 75 degrees. You cringe as she has to feel around lightly, but the careful caress is kind of relieving against the warm, inflamed skin.

“I think I’ll call you cool kid ‘til you tell me your name,” She says as she continues to gently peel the bandages off.

That’s surprisingly agreeable. You make the mistake of replying,” You’re pretty cool yourself, I guess.”

She only has to rummage for a little bit before bringing out what she has for a med kit. You talk her through cleaning your wounds, not having much trouble accommodating for her lack of sight because her sense of smell, and for one uncomfortable moment, taste, makes up for it.

You grin and bear it despite her unpracticed fingers applying too much pressure occasionally. You calmy instruct her to bandage your wounds correctly. Don’t pull too tightly, make sure they lie flat, not bunched or wrinkled. It’s a long process because you haven’t had to teach anyone in a long time and your whole torso needs bandaging. From light prodding, you estimate four broken ribs.

“If you want to sleep at the foot of my pile, you can. It’d beat sleeping on the floor,” She offers when she hooks the last bandage in place. There’s a small inkling of hope in that proposition, you can hear it.

“Pile?”

“Yeah, you know, what you sleep on?”

You recall how they laid out piles of rags at the breeding center for the humans to sleep on. You’d thought it was just to show they didn’t care about your comfort, but maybe they just never invented beds. Despite not looking forward to another night on the floor, the likeness to letting Lassie sleep at the edge of the bed is enough for you to decline, “No thanks.”

“Are you hungry? Do you need-”

“I’m good,” You interrupt. She is obviously trying hard to make her new pet happy, but you aren’t about to oblige that.

With a small pout, she says,” Well, fine. I’m going to get some sleep.”

As she’s about to slam the door, you call out,” Wait!” With a sheepish frown, you ask,” Uh, do you have any shades I could wear? My eyes are killing me.” As much as you don’t want to rely on her for anything, you feel really uncomfortable without sunglasses.

“But your eyes smell delicious.”

“I’d just really like a pair of shades, uh, my eyes are really sensitive and my favorite pair went missing,” You admit. You don’t get much of a response from her. She just spins her head back towards the exit and leaves the bathroom.

You finish up cleaning your face in the mirror. You’re surprised you can see out of your left eye with how swollen it is. The eyebrow is torn to shreds and so is your nose. Whoever did the initial medical aid must have actually known what they were doing. Your nose was set as straight as it would ever get, and the gash through your cheek is sewn tightly but not pulling the skin around it. You’re kind of an ugly sight right now; black and blue all over.

The purplish splotches are rimmed with red, irritated skin, contorting over raised lumps of swelling.  Abrasions from hitting the ground and one or two ally walls leaves a comic book dotting effect on part of your jaw and forehead, and you feel a little morbid for finding it kind of cool to look at. It looks sick, if you will, in both senses of the word. “Well, Strider, you seen worse,” You mutter to yourself. This might be a slight exaggeration. You’ve never had the shit beat out of you this horrifically.

With a final gauze pad taped above your left eye, you shrug on the ugly sweater, grab your blanket, and try to get some sleep in the corner of the living room.

~~

~~

“Hey, cool kid, wake up.”

Your eyes wearily open to stare up at the teal blood and you ask pointedly,” What.”

“I got to go to work, but I made some food for you.”

You’re handed a bowl of something like cereal. “Why did you wake me up?” You ask with all the irritation of a teenager woken before noon. Your stiff chest cracks as you sit up, which hurts like hell and is probably bad for your ribs.

“You weren’t awake and I wanted to make sure you eat.”

Eating is the last thing on your mind right now. The pain surging through your neck and back is like the sting of 1000 angry Fuck You Hornets (you are sure that is a thing); you must have slept on the them wrong, which isn’t hard to imagine since you slept on the floor. Looking down at the food provided, you notice it looks at least semi-palatable.

Deciding whether you should appease her or go hungry, you settle on dropping the dish to the ground. Not only does it show your defiance, it makes a mess. Bonus. _‘Nothing drives cray cray fools more batty than a starving ironic dude among dudes_ ’, Ghandi. You are pretty sure Gandhi never said that, but he should have.

She jumps out of the way of the sloshing food, but you let it soak into your clothing. She doesn’t look amused what so ever. She can’t break you; you won’t become a pet.

With a frustrated growl, Terezi snaps,” What was that for?!”

Running a hand through your gorgeous hair to slick it back some, you recline and ignore her. You are the king of all cats in pissing off your ‘owner’.

“Starve then. See if I care.”

You bite back a frown- you shouldn’t feel bad. The door of her house slams and you decide to explore a little more.

You watched her stomp down a spiral staircase, and check it out first. Most of the house is on the upper level then, you acknowledge, because all that is down there is the exit to house. Being the dutiful rebel you are, you decide to climb down and check out the crazy door.

You regret your decision once you are half way down, debating whether you should just head back up already because you are struggling for breath. Pushing passed the burning though, you make it all the way down with sluggish steps, and examine the door.

Your fingertips brush against the strange metal, with only an indent of a horseshoe and line in it. Feeling the depression in the door, you figure that must be the lock, or maybe just the missing handle, because despite jostling it and feeling for other means of opening it, you can’t get the door to budge.

Walking around the mudroom, you see nothing else of interest and return back to the main floor. You explore the kitchen, surprised to find that there are actual normal foods like creamsicles on this planet.

You have to take a twenty minute long break from the hunger and pain tolling on your body, but then are able to finish your first sweep of the house. After the bathroom, there’s an open storage room, and a locked room across from it. You can only assume that must be her bedroom.

Returning to the living room disappointed that you didn’t find anything interesting, and it took all of like 10 minutes minus the break, you sit and stare at the rubix cube wanna-be. You refuse to play with it out of principle. Sub-sentient your ass.

Curling up, you decide there is nothing better to do than sleep, and honestly, you kind of need it. Your dreams are plagued by survival. Surviving is the hardest thing, so much harder than living, which you’re not certain you remember how to do.


	3. Chapter 3

A cold hand touches you, and you automatically grapple into an arm hold and reach for your trusty knife. Opening your eyes in panic as you find it missing, you switch tactics and wildly swing with your club of a cast.

You’re not letting the fucking greys off you today. 

Seeing the bright red eyes, you stop, kind of glad that she was able to catch the punch before it clocked her in the face. “Well, hello to you too,” She says with a pointy grin, amused at your outlash. 

Your defense dies down into stupefied staring as you frantically think how you could play this down and still remain cool. This should be the last of your concerns though, because you are dying of a respiratory attack. It’s like you came back from the war- but oh wait, you kind of did. No government meant no political maneuver to term it a ‘conflict’.

Awkwardly coughing, you avert your gaze and see the light streaming in weakly from a window. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Change topic. Yes. Good.

“I was just about to. I won’t lie, I was hoping you would eat.”

You suck your lips against your teeth to keep you from saying anything. Hunger strike and all that. Supposed to stay silent too, you think. You’re not really sure, but it seems to frustrate her, which is the goal. Obviously.

She doesn’t wait very long for a response, probably having anticipated your move or lack there of. Instead she just sighs and lets her head droop. Fishing something out- where did it even come from, seriously, does she even have pockets on her dress… suit… thing?- your breath hitches as you recognize the item.

She holds up the sunglasses, rounded aviators exactly like your old ones. She holds them out to you, but you shut your eyes and pretend to go back to sleep. Show no interest. Will yourself not to reach out and grab the shades you so desperately want because DAMMIT you’ve got principles. Or should play that you do, at the very least.

Brows furrowing behind those intense red shades, she murmurs defeatedly,” Whatever, I’ll just set them here.” They click against the floor as she abandons them, followed by the soft tap tap of her boots before she rips them off and throws them to the side angrily. 

Disappearing into the locked room and closing it swiftly behind herself, you think you hear a soft sob from behind that door.

You try to get comfortable and go back to sleep for at least an hour, but to no avail. Probably because you are sleeping on a fucking floor. You startle awake and curse because you must have actually been sleeping there for a second and spoiled it. About to attempt sleep for the fifth time that day, you instead notice Terezi’s door is open.

Getting to your feet, you glance around quickly to see if she’s in the general vicinity. Grabbing your new shades, you take a few steps forwards while setting them on the bridge of your nose before coming to a dead stop. They feel so familiar, and you crinkle your nose in confusion as you take them off. Examining them, you brush your thumb against the frames, surprised at the bump in the metal on the temple where you had tried to adjust them to lie flat on your face. The scratch across the lens that reflects where they must have hit the ground when they got punched off your face, and you are positive that these are your lost shades.

The corners of your lips pull at the totally unironic smile tugging for control of your expression.

You don’t know how she did it, but you have to admit you are really glad she found them.

Your pace is slower as you continue your journey to the unexplored, satisfaction ringing through your darkened sight.

Peeking in, you discern a troll free zone. Surreptitiously traversing across the room, you gaze in horror at the aforementioned ‘pile’. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were just a pile of plush dragons, that’s kind of cute maybe, but they all come with their own nooses. Kinky.

Passing the creeptastic pile, you head for the computery thing. You think they call them husktops or some ridiculous uncreative thing like that. Quickly flitting into her windows, you find nothing remarkable aside from the open chat log.

 

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]  
TA: hey TZ, are you done wiith work yet?  
TA: iit2 been liike two hour2 youre 2tiill not back FUCK.  
TA: iim 2orry plea2 an2wer iits been a really bad day at work.  
GC: MY D4YS B33N ROUGH TOO D1D YOU G3T 4NOTH3R M1GR41N3 TOD4Y >:?  
TA: yeah, but that2 nothing new how2 your new pet?  
GC: HORR1BL3 1 THOUGHT G3TT1NG 4 P3T WOULD M4K3 TH1NGS B3TT3R BUT 1 W4S WRONG  
GC: NO M4TT3R WH4T 1 DO H3 H4T3S ME  
GC: 1 DONT N33D TH1S 1M 4LR34DY GO1NG THROUGH 4LL TH4T STUFF W1TH MY K1SM3S1S 4ND M4T3SPR1T  
TA: ii told you you 2hould have gotten a grub.  
GC: 1 TH1NK HUM4N GRUBS 4R3 C4LL3D B4B13S  
TA: that2 riidiiculou2 ii refu2e two call them that.  
TA: you 2aiid youre haviing i22ue2 wiith your kii2me2ii2? dont tell me that doucheta2tiic juggalo of your2 ii2 beiing hiis normal 2hiity 2elf FUCK.  
TA: ii2 he hurtiing you agaiin?  
GC: NO NO NOT TH4T B4D 1 SW34R  
TA: TZ, iim caliignou2 wiith the EQ of all troll2 and he ha2 never ever gone pa22ed when ii 2aiid no. even when mad.  
TA: he could tear me iin two ea3iily but he2 only ever drawn a liittle blood.  
GC: HOW L1TTL3 1S L1TTL3?  
TA: liike 2cratche2 down my back duriing you know.  
GC: R34LLY >:/  
TA: ii 2wear iim goiing two riip hiis 2liime2uckiing iignorance tunnel out of hiis fuckiing face.  
TA: he pi22e2 me off 2o much and not iin the good way you 2hould diitch hiim. youre worth 2o much better.  
GC: NO 1M NOT  
GC: 1 C4NT 4FFORD MY K1SM3S1S 4NYW4YS  
GC: 1M 4LR34DY S34RCH1NG FOR 4 M4T3SPR1T 1 DONT N33D 3V3N MOR3 PRE22UR3  
TA: you are two and ii know it2 problematiic.  
TA: iit 2tiill fuckiing 2uck2 though. ii wii2h ii could fiix iit.

You stop reading for a second, your brain frying from the translating the foreign letters. You skim over the next portion, it just being a whole boring conversation on his frequent migraines and Terezi’s advice on how to fix them. Also her convincing him not to go on a mass murder spree and kill all of his coworkers, which seemed pretty bad for troll society, but also a pretty normal problem. You think she goes on to ask what his work schedule looks like and he says they better hang out soon because he’s going on another voyage soon.

Just when you thought you were going to give up on the whole chat thing, you see a portion pertaining to yourself.

GC: HOW DO 1 G3T MY P3T TO L1K3 M3?  
TA: diid you giive hiim that puzzle?  
GC: Y34H BUT H3 H4SNT 3V3N TOUCH3D 1T >:[  
TA: maybe you 2hould take hiim on a playdate two 2ee other human2 my mate2priit and kiisme2ii2 have human2.  
GC: WH1CH M4T3SPR1T?  
TA: FF  
GC: WOW 1TS B33N 4 LONG T1M3 S1NC3 1 S4W H3R COND3SC3NS1ON 4ND 1M NOT R34LLY 4T MY B3ST R1GHT NOW 1 TH1NK 1LL ST1CK TO YOUR K1SM3S1S  
TA: iim 2eiing hiim iin two niight2 he hate2 unexpected gue2t2. want two come wiith?  
GC: TH4T SOUNDS GR34T 1 HOP3 TH4T H3LPS PUT MY HUM4N 1N A B3TT3R MOOD  
GC: 1 JUST C4NT D34L W1TH 3V3RYTH1NG R1GHT NOW YOU KNOW?  
CG: TH3 COURT 1S D3C1D1NG TOMORROW HOW LONG 1 H4V3 TO F1ND 4 N3W M4T3SPR1T  
CG: 1TS JUST SO H4RD  
GC: 4FT3R H1M... W3LL 1 GU3SS YOU KNOW EX4CTLY WH4T 1 M34N  
TA: of cour2e ii do TZ lo2iing hiim must

“Cool kid?” a surprised call comes, cutting you off from your reading- you don’t even get to finish the line you were reading.

Regrettably you must turn away to look at her and are not able to read the tantalizing secrets of your troll.

“How much did you read?” She demands, the recognizable cry of denied privacy scratching her tone. You may feel a little bad about violating her privacy, but that’s kind of squandered by the fact that she’s outright denying your personhood.

“Can’t read alternian,” You lie. To survive, you learned their crazy language. To survive, you learned how to read their memos on where they would strike next. You could code and decode in their lame language. 

“Good.” Her whole body deflates from the anxiety she managed to exude in point three seconds. Upon further inspection, you can see she’s just plain deflated. Her expression is weary, even though she’s straining a toothy smile. Her shoulders sag, and you notice deep turquoise bruises hiding under the sleeves of her daygown, peeking out at the neckline cruelly.

From what you just read, seeing the dark splotches makes your stomach turn. “I just changed my mind,” You volunteer. “Sleeping on the floor is pretty lame, yo.”

You can’t bear to see how much her face lights up when you utter this. Your cover-up has just made her day, you’re pretty sure, and it’s made of lies. You sit on the proverbial throne of lies, and now you are about to snuggle on the physical pile of hanged plushies. Sometimes you question your life choices.

She’s so tired, she doesn’t even question this. The teal blood just waltzes over to her pile and curls up on it, waiting expectantly. Sighing and trying to pass it off as a yawn, you follow her and awkwardly step onto the pile before just fall-kneeling next to her, trying to curl up comfortably on your side, and closing your eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why was the CSS coding so difficult? It fought me on every single line x.x Glad we can format the chat logs, but it was not a smooth process. Oh well, it worked in the end.


	4. Chapter 4

That night when she returns from work, you quickly set down the logic toy and slide it to the other side to the room, pretending you had not just broken under the temptation of having something else to do than sleep. The door closes gently, but she lingers there long enough to draw your curious attention. 

As you walk over to the stairs you see that she hasn’t even taken off her coat or boots, and she is just leaning against the door as if trying to keep some foe from entering. Sniffling and catching her tears quickly, she inhales deeply and sighs. “Hey, cool kid.”

Pressing her ear to the door quickly and waiting a few seconds, she exhales in relief and shuffles up the winding staircase, shedding her warm coat. 

Sympathetically when you really shouldn’t be, you ask,” You okay?”

She has just reached the top as she turns to you to answer. “The courts decided today. I have half a sweep to find a new matesprit.”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“I get culled. The law is not forgiving.” Tear stains remain on her cheeks no matter how hard she must have wiped them away, a faint blue seafoam against her grey skin. 

“What happened to your old one?”

You don’t miss the hesitation before she answers,” He... died.” 

Her face is desolate, but Terezi forces a smile as she proposes,” You want to see another human soon? My old friend has a human of his own, and I was thinking you might like to meet them.” Her happiness is so painfully faked as she hopes for your approval.

You should say no, you should say _I’m not a fucking pet to take on a walk and sniff the butts of the other pets_... she’s so broken behind that unnatural smile, you grudgingly answer,“ I guess.”

~~  
~~

“Fuck no, there is no fucking way I’m wearing that. Shove my ass into a box and ship me home to die of radiation poisoning, I refuse to go outside in that.”

She growls in frustration before whining,” Come on, cool kid. It’s just a leash. You have to wear it; It’s the law.”

“Who cares about the law?!” You spout, flailing your unbroken arm to keep her at bay.

“I DO!” She yells back, teal in the face, and you know that you have stepped on the wrong ground. Catching her breath from her outburst, she continues softly,” It’s all I have left these days.” You had been fighting her on wearing a leash for the last ten minutes. It looks like you wore her too thin. “Please, cool kid,” She begs,” Just until we reach the railvehicle. Do it for me.”

Averting your gaze and scowling, you sigh. “Fine.”

“Thanks, cool kid.”

“It’s Dave,” You offer, cursing your own stupidity as you give her this information. She’s just a stupid grey, why are you letting her leash you. Why are you giving her your name when you know that will make her insanely happy. Why are you such a fucking idiot.

With a warm smile, she corrects herself,” Thanks, Dave.”

You roll your eyes behind your shades and lift your chin so clasping the collar on goes quicker. It’s smooth against your skin, slightly cold, but within moments it is the perfect temperature you barely notice it. There is no space between your skin and it’s sleek metal, fitting almost like a choker necklace, and you resist the urge to mess with it. She would probably find that funny, and you have to maintain your cool and in control attitude. 

At least it’s red.

“But I’m not leading or falling behind like some kind of mutt. We are walking side by side like equals,” You lay down a law of your own. 

She nods enthusiastically, just happy that you two can finally go. “We’re meeting my moirail at the railvehicle.”

“You mean a train.”

Ignoring you, she continues,” I hope you like him. He means a lot to me, and is having a rough time right now, so be nice to him.”

“Yeah, I’ll give him a taste of my prime quality sarcasm.”

“Dave, no.”

Sticking your hands in some of your million pockets, you smirk and start heading to the door. You watch as she fishes out the strange handle made of the horseshoe and line shape, which you only just realise is the symbol she wears every day. Pressing it into the grooves, she opens the heavy door and brings you out into troll society.

You are so grateful that you have your aviators since they give you a sense of security, because dealing with one troll was hard enough after the years of fighting for your life and freedom against these ruthless aliens. You are almost hyperventilating when you two walk out into the crowd.

They’re just going about their daily lives, and it’s so bizarre to see them out of the military scene. They get too close to you and your skin prickles as your stomach flips and man are you trying to remain calm, but-

Terezi pulls you closer, thankfully by pulling on your sleeve and not the leash, and you bristle at the idea that you need her to protect you. You do feel much more comfortable though as she links arms with you, her cold elbow laying perfectly against your sore rib cage and providing an anchor to think about instead of the pressing fear that’s trying to force its way up your throat.

Once you get to the train station, it’s a lot better though. Apparently trains are only popular enough to garner moderate interest, because the crowds have dwindled down to about twenty.

You can deal with twenty trolls you think, well so long as they all stay perfectly still and don’t say anything. There is a dorky yellow blood coming your way, and after looking down at your clothes and back up at his stupid glasses, you’re pretty sure he’s the moirail.

Terezi lets go of you to give a big hug to the other troll, and you concentrate hard to not let your static frown deepen. Pulling away, Terezi happily introduces,” This is Sollux, my moirail, and this is Dave.”

You bite your lip hard as you think about how much you regret confiding your name. “Yo,” You greet with all of the enthusiasm of a candyholic going in to see the dentist.

Speaking of the dentist, he jams his skinny fingers into your mouth to check your teeth and gums. You are too stunned to react right away, just staring incredulously at him before blinking some sense back into your brain and pulling away. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Ignoring you completely, he comments to Terezi,” Well besides the broken bones and cuts, he seems pretty healthy.” His lisp is overly distracting, and you absently wonder if orthodontists exist in troll society because _damn_ \- those teeth are crooked like a lawyer.

Maybe it’s indicative of poor priorities, but you finally realize you just got checked out like a horse, and immediately you begin to hate this moirail guy. 

“TZ, we’re going to miss our railvehicle if we wait a long time.” They walk hand in hand and you follow behind quickly so the collar doesn’t pull. 

Entering the railvehicle is weird, mainly because it’s troll shit, and troll shit is just weird. You feel like you’re entering a giant worm or some shit. Your stomach roils as you see another human kept as a pet. She’s young, maybe 13 years old. She looks almost as bad as you, black eye, and broken lip and nose. You half heartedly wave, but she looks away quickly. Her troll notices and you sincerely hope you haven’t made her life harder.

It’s not a very long ride, only about twenty minutes, but it’s enough for you to get even more annoyed with Mr. 3D glasses.

“So, has it been behaving better?”

Cutting off Terezi before she can answer, you flippantly respond,” Oh, you know, I’ve been behaving pretty well for a sub-sentient pet. All not talking or understanding when fucking imbeciles talk around me.” Your throat catches hard as you momentarily fear he’ll strike you or something. He just stares you down with disdain though. You can live with that.

“Smartass,” He scoffs.

“I know, it’s smarter than your head.” That’s a pretty lame comeback, you acknowledge, but it does the job in getting him mad.

“Please!” Terezi cuts off the bickering,” Please, I was really hoping you’d get along.”

So-lucks instantly looks regretfull, and mutters something about himself being stupid. You’re pretty sure he’ll leave you alone the rest of the trip. Making Terezi happy seems to be his prime objective.

The rest of the short train ride, maybe fifteen minutes more, is uneventful. It sure doesn’t make you like the yellow blood any more, but you probably dislike him no more. It’s as you’re leaving that you remember she’d promised you could take off the stupid collar on the train. 

Annoyance split between being lied to and acknowledging you're a fucking idiot because you LET HER PUT A FUCKING COLLAR ON YOU make you want to tear it off yourself as you're walking up the private road to an eerie mansion. It reeks of aristocracy and creepiness, and not going to lie, you are already judging this guy.

As you walk along side the trolls, keeping in mind to place Terezi between you and police eyes over there, you begin to reach up for the annoying collar.

“Uh, TZ?” Lucky Sole voice raises to her attention. He sounds concerned, but you can’t fathom why. 

“No, Dave wai-!” Terezi’s voice is cut off by your strangled yelp as your fingers are just barely unable to curl around the edges of your collar.

The unusual pavement cuts into your exposed knees as you fall to ground, desperately pulling at the collar that threatens to constrict your airway completely. You try a few feeble attempts to vocalize that you are being choked, but the harder you try to speak or pull the damn thing off, the tighter the collar becomes.

Your cheeks are strained like you’ve sustained the same note on a trumpet throughout the whole symphony performance, like you can feel every vein strained. You’re light headed, not only from the obvious lack of oxygen, but undoubtedly because carotid arteries are being cut off from supplying your brain blood- wait, you feel like that is outside knowledge, something you wouldn’t know the technical jargon about- and woah are you feeling just awful.

They are yelling at you, something about letting go, but you are shaking your head. As if that will help, because can’t they see that it’s choking you? Well, one of them is blind, but it’s pretty obvious to you that letting go would mean certain death.

One hand glowing blue, the other red, and suddenly your hands are pried from the collar telekinetically. Fucking aliens and their cool ass powers. The important thing however, is that you can breathe again. Sharp inhales are searing your lungs and it’s enough to make you slump over with a sense of vertigo.

“The collars are coded to contract when touched by non troll hands, dipshit.”

You swear to any higher being willing to listen that you will punch all the teeth out of that arrogant, condescending pissblood if it’s the last thing you do. “Shouldn’t you try to pick insults you can actually pronounce?”

Tension is rising, but Terezi quickly cuts you both off with,” I think he’s answering the door.”

How she could possibly know that- though further reflection points to possibly smell…? Or maybe hearing with the whole senses growing in the lack of others or some shit- is pretty irrelevant when she’s proved right. The grandiose door swings open to reveal a monster of a troll, though you would defend the idea they are all monsters, standing easily two heads above the two you are currently lying by. His well defined musculature is intimidating by itself, the height just adding to the STRONGness he is emanating.

“You are aware how much I despise having uninvited guests,” This hulking troll says with great disapproval towards Sollux. “Although it is rather agreeable to see you again despite residing so low among the blue bloods.”

With a hyena grin, she quips,” Glad I can’t see you myself.” You’re not sure if she meant to display how little she liked this individual, or if she was just pointing out her blindness like she tended to every five minutes. Probably the latter.

You personally are not liking this troll. If his heavy breathing and intense sweating pick up one bit you are going to personally cry out you need an adult. Twenty years old be damned, you are officially creeped out.

For some reason this situation doesn’t seem to be awkward, going out of your way to piss off your lover by bringing a third wheel with a pet, and you and your posse are cordially invited in. You learn that this troll’s name is Equius, though no one thought to introduce you. You figure it’s because this troll, while seemingly quite a close friend from long ago, isn’t very important to your ‘owner’ and Sollux doesn’t give a shit about whether you know who people are. 

“Why don’t I let our pets meet and begin their unscheduled playdate before preparing a snack,” Equius suggests as he brings you further and further into his mansion of a hive, decor like a dated sci-fi that values showing off technology and how advanced it is over comfort.

“Sure, skip the grub for the humans, and here I thought animal abuse was illegal,” you say as you switch on your most flippant expression you can muster, which, actually is kind of your default expression by this point in your life. That was probably in bad taste. You remember after your comment that they call their young grub- though isn’t grubsauce a thing… ? Oh well. Everyone keeps walking like you said nothing of consequence.

You try to stop and look in one of the rooms that looks interesting. It was kind of filled with medical looking stuff- but Terezi quickly grabs you by the arm and drags you.

A door is opened to a contrastingly bright room with a single resident busily tapping away on his keyboard. “Human, a fellow member of your miserable and ill-mannered race has been brought for you to play with,” Equius booms, but you can’t help notice that beneath all that scary and creepy STRONGNESS to his voice, he holds a certain fondness for his pet.

“Have fun,” Terezi half-heartedly wishes you. You bet she is weighed down with the very real possibility that you will bitch and moan about this when you get back to the house to make her feel even worse about this whole pet business.

Thick black hair that seems to defy physics revolves to reveal a face that strikes a familiar chord in your chest. As the door is closed and you are most likely locked in with this unstrange-stranger, you just stand there dopily and stare.

“Name’s John,” He introduces as he stands up. This man, most likely the same age as you, is reminiscent of a memory gone by. In the same way that if you watched your favorite live action show every day of your life that featured a child star and then years later watched their crappy B horror film that was their attempt to escape child stardom, without realizing it, you’d be like ‘Dude, that is totally that one guy with the one face’.

“Egbert…?” You ask hesitantly, that chord playing in your chest turning out to actually be your heart skipping a beat or five.

“Dave?!” He asks, his blue eyes lighting up like electricity as he runs over like a doofus to give you the worlds biggest hug. 

You don’t have the heart to tell him how excruciating this is as he squeezes the living daylights out of you. You instead try to distract yourself with being annoyed that your nose is buried in his shoulder (and you’re being generous to your stature) because you’re short. Of course he grew like a weed on Miracle Gro. That bastard.

“You look like shit, Strider,” He informs you as he finally ceases the hug and checks you out from nose to toes. He should be talking. He looks like the protege of Edward scissor hands, but your not going to mention it- because unlike some people, you are decent enough not to mention how absolutely shitty a guy looks.

“Thanks, I totally didn’t notice I was used as a punching bag by troll gangs.”

“How long have you been hivebent?” John asks in horror.

“What are you even talking about.”

“Sorry, it’s what we’re calling it on the forums once you enter troll society,” John explains, pointing to the computer he was horsing around on when you first were abandoned here. “Ah, which reminds me!” He scrambles back and types a few quick sentences before shutting his jury-rigged laptop.

He picks it up and puts it away on a shelf, which scanning the room, basically all the walls are _is_ shelving. “Dude,” you start,” Are you seriously using pennies to keep that piece of shit working?”

Looking to his laptop before sliding it all the way onto the shelf, he sheepishly laughs,” Yeah.”

“You know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a fucking penny?” 

“Lemme guess. Too long?” John asks, his happy go lucky self smiling as he grabs down a can of some unpronounceable vegetable and grabs out a copper coin and flips it at you. “I had been on my way to deposit my piggy bank at the real bank when I was abducted. I use the pennies to keep my computers from overheating.”

“You would still keep a piggy bank,” You say as you incredulously play with the penny. “Man, I’ve only been ‘hivebent’ for like three months tops, but it’s been at least four years since I saw anything other than bartering.” Your brain quickly runs through the values and appearance of all the coins and dollars you once were so accustomed to using on a daily basis. It seems like a different life.

This John, this older, much more techno-savvy John, seems quite capable around machinery if his sorry excuse for a room is anything to go by. “Okay, so you have to help me get this thing off,” you say, indicating the collar but being afraid to come close to touching it. That’s when you notice John is wearing one too, if much smaller and slimmer.

“No can do, Dave. If I try to remove it, that thing will strangle you to death before I can even open the plating.”

Disappointment hits you harder than it has in a very long time, and you can tell it is showing on your face. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up. Don’t fucking tell me you have become a sheep and law abiding pet. Don’t fucking tell me that.” Your one hope that you were going to ‘escape from this and get back to Earth and maybe start up some kind of resistance like they always do in the movies’ fades from your being. Your shoulders sag and you can’t bother to hide your dismay. “C’mon, Obi Wan.”

With a sidelong frown, he lets out a dejected sigh. Returning his gaze to you, he places a hand on your shoulder and says,” I’m sorry, Dave, but Earth is gone. I’m fighting for what’s left. I’ve been working with an underground team in trying to get human rights going for the last few years.”

This doesn’t sound like the John you knew. The one you used to wake up two hours early for so that you could message him before he left for school, and that John hadn’t realized time zones were actually a thing for a solid year. The goofball that couldn’t figure out basic computer language and programming and still had difficulty tying his shoes in fourth grade was the John you knew.

That John was also fighter, an idiotic one, but a fighter none the less. He was like the perfect anime idiotic hero. Never compromised his beliefs and just kept working towards what he knew was right. Unless you gave him good advice, then he would totally fail you. You reflect it’s been over seven years since you last talked. People change, or maybe he was just being realistic in his goals so that he could accomplish them and bring marginal peace to mankind.

“I know you probably don’t want to hear it, but resisting being a pet won’t help save mankind. I wouldn’t even have a handle on a forum with other pro human rights activists if I didn’t play along a little.”

He’s right. You don’t want to hear this. This sucks with a capital Kirby.

But you don’t want to sour your time with your long time friend that you had mourned the loss of seven years ago. You don’t know if Terezi will ever bring you back, so you sit and say,” Who cares about this, let’s stop talking about it. I thought you were dead for sure on the Day of Darkness.”

He joins you on the ground and you both start regaling tales of surviving without the internet and as stuff started blowing up. You both magically stray away from mentioning either of your guardians, which you think is how your conversations should stay forever because you’re pretty sure his dad died.

You remember hearing that the whole west coast had been decimated by the trolls within weeks of their invasion. You had kept a lingering hope that John had survived for a few months, but as living conditions got worse and worse, your pessimism grew and your knowledge of the trolls’ ruthlessness filled out, that hope had fizzled and died. Now you know that he had been captured early on and survived testing. You know he means more than just the exams to check you had no anomalies, but he never expounds more. You figure you don’t want to know.

“Have you found anyone else yet?” you ask as he brings up his four years of living with Equius and how that lead to discovering the interest and starting up the first pro humans forum. “I mean from our group of friends?”

“No,” John says with a light shake of his head. “I’ve tried searching a little, but we’re working hard just to get internet privileges for humans to be mainstream. Anyways, most people on trollian say that they changed their handle from when they were on pesterchum. For security of course. Don’t want anything linked to you or your troll.”

You have the forethought to ask his trollian handle now, just in case you never see him again, because you would probably Hulk out if you found out you lost all contact with your best friend again. ectoBiologist doesn’t seem so bad, but it doesn’t quite capture ghostyTrickster, you think. Oh well, not your handle; not your concern.

John suddenly stands up. He reaches up and grabs some towels off one of his built in shelves. “He probably needs some fresh towels by now.” 

It surprises you for a moment that John is going out of his way to help a _troll_ out of genuine altruism, but then again, it really doesn’t because John is still the same John you’ve known since childhood after all. You subconsciously adjust your glasses that you secretly-not-so-secretly cherish. He always gave the best gifts and was so conscious of what people needed. You kind of envy his heroic selflessness. 

When he comes back, you are sort of caught rifling through his computer checking out his trollian. You can’t even lie to yourself; you’re totally snooping. You attempt an ironic salute with your casted arm and John just rolls his eyes.

“You could’ve just asked.”

“But you were busy bringing towels to your pervy troll.”

“He’s not pervy,” John defends,” Why would you even assume that?”

“He looked at horse robots kind of… interestingly as he lead us here.”

“He just really like robots,” John responds, but you can tell he doesn’t buy what he’s saying either.

John sits beside you and says,” Most of my chumps are all part of the same organization.” He points to the list that appears much like chums from pesterchum, and continues,” It’s lead by this troll who started the fight for human rights close to a sweep after the invasion, right when experiments started picking up. I started talking to him about two sweeps ago, when Equius let me start building a computer… as a treat for good behavior.”

You look at the name and snicker,” carcinoGenesist, sounds like a real great guy. Who doesn’t want their rights fought for by cancer?”

John ignores you and instead points out another name. He has things to say about all of them. How their colors follow their blood color if they were trolls, and how many of them lived in some close colony that had forcibly abolished pethood of humans. There were still issues regarding _how_ equal humankind was, but they were working on that.

It was clear that Egbert tried to play down his role, but you get the feeling he is up there with the with the cancer guy in terms of power and importance in the organization. Maybe he is still fighting the good fight, though you refuse to play along like a pet personally.

“So any hot chicks on that site? Humans preferably, I mean, I don’t know your weird fetishes-” Pink quickly flushes the other guy’s face and you cough back surprise. “Wait… Don’t tell me you actually have a thing for one of the trolls.”

“Well, I mean, not on Trollian… No,” Egbert finishes lamely. “And it’s not like they’d ever even consider me, or is even really all that single…?”

“Who the fuck do you even see besides your owner, oh mr. cat?”

John clams up like he should of a minute ago. Wringing his hands he kind of looks more embarrassed than you assumed possible. “Oh hell no, don’t tell me you have a thing for Horse McCreepy-”

“No, of course not! I have a crush on his matesprit!” John blurts out. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever. She’s taken and way out of my league anyways.”

“Ooh, please do tell,” You egg him gleefully. You totally are getting under his skin and it is glorious.

John is saved by the skin of his buckteeth as you almost get him to spill but the door is opened before he can actually say anything.

You have never hated a sweaty troll more.

“It’s time to go, cool kid,” Terezi says, standing to the side of her moirail.

You begin to protest, but cut yourself off. Perhaps playing along in certain situations is okay after all if it will potentially lead to hanging out with your best bro again. You even decide you won’t bitch and moan about it tonight.

You might even thank her and tell her how much you appreciate it.

Nah… That’s going overboard. You will however politely eat your meal. She’s earned that much.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: Gore and mention of tw: Abuse

You hear a heavy slam of the door, and like an obedient puppy, you find yourself walking towards the owner of the house. You’re already pretty close to the railing, so you are there in time to see as she leans against the door and crumples, soaked in-

Your heart skips a beat as you realize just how much blood that is. It’s hard for your brain, conditioned to red blood, to correctly discern that the teal paint should really be making you a little sick. The nausea sets in as you rush madly down the stairs, and you swallow down the lump in your throat. “Terezi?” You call tentatively,” Are you alright?”

She’s crying hard, her teal tears streaming down her face and mixing with- it’s only now that you’re closer you realize she has deep purple blood smeared on her face and dripping down her chin. “I- I told him it was enough, I didn’t want to continue tonight, a-and he got angry.” Her last word sends a defined shiver down her already trembling frame. Her dress is torn to a hardly modest length, and she’s missing a boot.

Her right leg looks severely injured if the copious bruising is anything to go by, and cuts are dripping all cross her body. Her short hair is plastered to her face by the green-bluish blood oozing from her broken nose and the purple blood dripping from her yellow fangs. You kneel beside her to check her vitals before realizing you don’t even know what’s normal for her. She does seem even colder than she normally does though.

Crystalline eyes drooping, you shake her gently to keep her from falling asleep. That can’t possibly be good with that much blood loss. “Terezi, come on, stay with me here.” Her breathing is pretty slow you realize as you count only two hands and like one toe’s worth breaths per minute. Is this a troll going into shock? Is she dying? 

You can’t deal with this, she’s probably dying and you have no way to help her.

A thought, not a particularly enlightened one but smart none the less, clicks in your head and you advise her,” Stay awake” as you raise to your feet. Dashing up the stairs and almost slipping to your own death with all the blood on your feet, you run to her room and curse as you find it locked like normal. Hoping beyond all levels of hope that locks and door frames in troll society aren’t especially strong for house structures, you back up ready to kick.

Smashing your heel into the space below the lock thankfully works after the third stomp and you smash your way into her room. Opening her trollian, you quickly enter in a new chump ectoBiologist.

 

GC: dude youve got to help me out  
GC: my troll is bleeding out on the floor  
GC: shes not really breathing well either and is kinda falling asleep  
GC: egbert i swear to god if you dont answer me i will end you  
GC: …  
GC: its been like a minute come on  
GC: screw you and your pennies  
gallowsCalibrator [GC]  has ceased trolling  ectoBiologist [EB]

Quickly scrolling through her list of chumps, you consider messaging her moirail, but you see one that makes you think of the horse creep you just went to see. You remember Terezi saying 3D glasses guy works on ships or something, so he might not be free.

gallowsCalibrator [GC]  began trolling  centaursTesticle [CG]

GC: okay pony mcfreak i think i need your help  
GC: my troll is kind of dying i think  
GC: dont tell me no one in that house can fucking read anymore

You were just about write more creative obscenities until the brute of a troll finally responds.

CG: There is no reason to be use such obscene language  
GC: nah youre right death is no big deal  
CG: How is she dying  
CG: l00sing bl00d or poison  
CG: or is it more convoluted than that  
GC: well ive never seen so much teal in my life if that helps  
CG: she could paint a whole storefront with her oozing lifeforce  
CG: so get your greasy equine ass over here and fix her up  
CG: I suggest you improve your language human  
CG: It is most unbecoming and you are completely replaceable.  
CG: aw love you too ponyboy  
CG: stay golden  
gallowsCalibrator [GC]  has ceased trolling centaursTesticle [CG]

Not bothering to see if he replied to that, you run back downstairs to see if she’s still breathing.

Her head lifts slightly as she hears your stomping down the stairs, and tries to smell who it is, but has the most heart wrenchingly pathetic moment as she inhales the purple blood and starts trying to snort it back out. “Cool kid?” She asks weakly.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

She visibly relaxes. You don’t know if you should be worried that she’s not shivering anymore. Sitting beside her and scooping her into your arms, you say,” I got the creepy horse guy coming over. He can heal you, right?”

“Oh, Equius… Yeah, I think so. He fixed up your arm for me… Another favor.” It hurts to listen to her raspy voice. She attempts to sniff the air again, but stops before letting the blood back into her nose.

“Uh, here,” You mumble as you gingerly wipe your sleeve under her nose and get the majority of the congealed blood off her face. She sniffles thankfully. “This is your kissysis’ doing isn’t it?”

“Kismesis?” Biting her lip, Terezi nods slowly. Dropping her head against your shoulder, you wince as a horn catches your chin but don’t complain. “I hate him, I really do, but sometimes I don’t think he hates me.” With new coherency as she bursts into fresh tears, she continues,” I think he just hates the world. He doesn’t care if it’s me he’s hurting, he just likes pain. Oh, cool kid! How am I supposed to find a matesprit if I can’t keep a good kismesis?” You think back to the Luxsol guy saying she should dump her kismesis. You agree, but you don’t know enough about their culture or if that’s even feasible.

That is when you realize that you are way too emotionally invested in this chick’s life. You should have been relieved when she came back this exhausted and cut up. This could have been a golden ticket out of this hell hole of pethood. Instead you freaked out and contacted a bigger, scarier troll. You actually think you care about this grey.

“Oh fuck,” You drop as you roll your eyes. “I’m developing fucking Stockholm Syndrome like a princess from a morally ambiguous fairytale.”

With pained effort, she asks,“ What is that? Is it lethal?”

Scowling as you start rubbing her back comfortingly, you whisper,” Don’t worry about it.” You stay like that for a good twenty minutes. You make her say something when you think she’s fallen asleep, and occasionally you are inspired enough to whisper something reassuring. She’s getting quieter and you’re worried she won’t make it until the robot guy gets here.

A heavy knocking reverberates through your back and you realize you’re sitting against the door. Gingerly pulling her enough to clear the entrance, you take the strange locking device from where she’d dropped it earlier and press the horseshoe into the door. It opens quickly under your assertive touch.

Nervousness instantly hits your stomach as you see another troll, but recognizing him as one who has avoided killing you so far settles you down enough to let him in. It’s hard not to react out of self-preservation and attack trolls when you see them.

He is all business as he pushes passed you. “How long has it been?”

“Well, uh, I contacted you about like three minutes after she got back.”

He picks her up like she’s made of glass and carries her up the stairs. You follow him into the kitchen where he uses one hand to sweep the table clean of dishes. Grabbing things out of his messenger styled bag, he quickly starts splinting her leg and wrapping her cuts. “This is worse than I imagined. I will have to take her back to my hive.”

“Can I come?”

“No.”

Feeling outrage pound on the back of your ribs, you cry,” Why not?”

“I did not have access to a mode of transportation and Strong hotfooted it here. You would not be able to keep up.”

“I can run, I’ll run as fast as I have to. I’d even wear that stupid collar.”

“I am sorry, human. My moirail sympathizes with your kind, so I shall see about having my pet inform you of Terezi’s well being.”

You don’t get a chance to say anything else as he jumps to the bottom of the steps and leaves. You are alone.

You are completely alone.

You have the key to the house and a guaranteed absence of your resident troll.

Like no sensible human in your position, you dazedly strip your bloody shirt, wash your hands and raid the fridge to no avail. You are in shock.

You sleep on the pile of hanged plushies. Check out the computer. By the next morning, you hesitantly open up trollian.

No one has contacted you. 

A day and a half passes before you start flipping you shit and start trolling Egbert.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling  ectoBiologist [EB]

GC: hey  
GC: not that i care  
GC: i could go years without knowing or a swept  
GC: or whatever the greys call it but  
GC: ...  
GC: how is she doing  
EB: aww  
EB: you do have a heart.  
GC: shut up before i flip my shit and fucking end you  
EB: i want my penny back if that’s how you feel ;P  
GC: you still make dorky faces oh my god  
GC: its literally the end of the world for earth and youre wasting precious moments exercising that semicolon pinky  
CG: fucking preparing it for the pinky olympics  
EB: i hunt and peck for punctuation ;P  
GC: just fan fucking tastic update there  
GC: but  
GC: um  
GC: back to my point  
GC: that i dont care about at all  
GC: but is she you know  
GC: okay?  
EB: yeah. equius said she should be back tomorrow.  
GC: cool  
GC: just wanted a time frame  
GC: for escaping  
GC: probably  
EB: how are you doing?  
EB: equius said you seemed pretty shaken up.  
GC: what  
GC: no that is ridiculous  
EB: there was a lot of blood. do you want to talk about it?  
GC: no  
GC: i should actually be going  
EB: but we finally just got started talking.  
GC: im exhausted  
GC: a cool kid needs his beauty sleep  
GC: the most beautiful of all sleep because im as cool as antartica used to be  
GC: you know the way first grade taught us not the way the shitastic greys made it when they decided to drown most of california  
EB: right. well talk to you later then, i guess

gallowsCalibrator [GC] has ceased trolling  ectoBiologist [EB]

At least you know she’s okay, even if you had to come off as an idiot. You weren’t lying when you said you were exhausted. At least you know she’s okay. Your head actually hurts pretty bad. At least you know she’s okay. You’re not doing so great.

Your stomach starts cramping as you fear she’s not coming back. You know she is, but that doesn’t matter. You thought you’d never lose Bro. You thought Bro would never fail you and leave you alone before you started even growing facial hair. Nauseous and dizzy, you try to walk over to the pile of hanged plushies but instead trip over your feet. Your wrists burn as you land wrongly.

Maybe it was the living on your own for five years… getting used to living with Terezi, even if she was a fucking prick about following pet laws… You can’t stand this silence of being alone. These past two days are affecting you like the day you lost Bro, and your body can’t handle it.

You have to curl up on the ground and think about Egbert’s words, she is coming back, as your throat tries to cut off the air and kill you. You may be having a panic attack.

Or something like it, or maybe you’re just dying and your mind didn’t catch up with the memo until you were in the throes of flipping your shit.

Trying to regulate your breathing for a few minutes, it seems like hours, you finally start to relax. Geez, you haven’t had a panic attack for a few years.

Crawling the rest of the way to the pile, you scoop up a red scalemate with pink eyes and ironically name it Blueberry as you squeeze the life out of it.


	6. Chapter 6

You’re hoping you can make edible pancakes from the stuff you found that seemed close to flour. You’re flipping said hopefully-edible pancakes when you hear a knock at the door.

Hesitantly padding downstairs, you press against the lock you left in the door. The familiar frame is outlined by pale moonlight; her hopeful sniffing melts into a shark grin.

“Hey, cool kid.”

You stare, standing awkwardly and biting your lip. You notice she has a cast like yours, but apparently troll casts let you walk on the injured limb. You don’t know how you should react. You don’t even know how you feel. Are you happy she came back? 

You think you might be, but you’d never admit it, so you just say,” Sup. Be starving all up in here. Trying to make pancakes like a champ. Want some?”

With a questioning quirk of the eyebrows, she hesitantly accepts. “What’s a pancake?”

“Your taste buds are about to take a sick ride through the ecstasy that is the common but succulent pancake.” Remembering they’re still on the griddle, you curse under your breath and tag on,” If they aren’t burnt.” Scampering up the steps, you come to the rescue of the fake cakes. You really hope that stuff puffs up like real pancakes.

Flipping them, you wince at the burnt coffee color. Terezi walks in behind you slowly, the clack clack of the boot giving it away. Inhaling deeply, she comments,” Mmm, smells like caramel brownies.”

You don’t know quite how her smell/taste thing works, so you decline to comment. Taking out plates, you serve up the flapjacks and set them on the table that’s still stained. You tried so hard to wipe out all the teal blood, but it’s still splattered across the hive here and there and there and there.

Her nose crinkles up as she sits down, clearly noticing her blood, but smiles as the flapjacks disrupt the eeriness, and perhaps to stop the uncomfortable expression that puts too much pressure on a recently broken nose. 

She tries to make small talk with,” It’s nice to smell you eating nicely.” But you don’t know how to reply without feeling like a pet in doing so. 

“So, uh, how, I mean-” You fumble over your words as you watch her eat delicately. Maybe you just have a tendency to stare and observe body language behind your shades where you are in your own world and people can’t see you are blatantly gawking. She is clearly used to chewing on her right side of her mouth but is continuously being forced by her injuries to switch. 

Trying to cover up your lingering, you ask,” Uh- What about work? Do trolls get FMLA?”

“FMLA…?”

“You know, like medical leave?”

“Oh, well, trolls go missing after fights all the time. As long as I show up to work in a few days, everything should be fine.” She puts down her bite of food before hugging her arms to her body and quietly tagging on,” I’m sure everyone knows by now how badly he beat me up before I bit through his neck.”

That imagery shuts down your appetite, and for some reason you no longer want seconds. Or to finish the second half of your first pancake.

“He probably survived, I mean he’s practically bullet proof.”

Tears well in her eyes, but she’s trying to bat them back. Shit. Fuck. You messed up. She shouldn’t be crying while eating the first meal you two have ate together. You should get her mind off the of the troll with purple blood. “Hey, can I have a computer?” Wow. So smooth. You are the smoothest and most sensitive man ever to walk the Earth or Delta System wherever the fuck you are. It does the job you wanted though; distracts her.

“What?” She asks, understandably confused by the mood whiplash.

“I had to er- kind of break into your room to contact Ponyboy to come save you. If I had my own computer, I wouldn’t have to break your door down again. And, uh, Egbert- the human you brought me to hang out with- has a laptop. I could talk to him more then, and that would make me really happy.” Are you rambling? You feel like you are rambling. You are probably rambling. You feel like a member of The Allman Brothers Band.

“Well, I hadn’t thought about it. Pets don’t usually-” Her face falters as she seems to realize what she’s said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…” 

You feel like you’ve been slapped. You had been waiting up day and night for her return, gotten sick over the thought she may never come back. You had offered to share your pancakes, the first food you’ve ate in days, and tried to hold a conversation, which she had appeared to be treating like a discussion between equals…

And she still views you like a pet.

Pushing your plate away from you softly, which you recognize is a human gesture and largely based on sight, you narrate,” I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Wait, Cool Kid, Dave. I didn’t-”

You stalk off to her room, since you don’t have one of your own to gloomily reside in, and slam the door shut even though you know it will just swing back open because you broke the jam. Maybe this could be seen as a tantrum. You bet your older sister- by four minutes!- would have a field day with this, especially when you pick up Blueberry and collapse on the pile to pout.

She would have a field day, except she’s probably dead. Or worse, a pet. You like to pretend you know what happened to your sisters. When your Bro filed for emancipation and legal guardian status, he only got you, and the rest of your family stayed in New York. It was your choice to move. You and Rose were deemed of legal age for choosing your guardian.

Sometimes you feel guilty. Selfish. Choosing to stay with your Bro, when Rose made the sacrifice to stay with your younger sister because someone had to protect her. Actually you feel horrible, like the most horrible a sibling could be, all the time. It had seemed like an honest choice of preference, because never in your wildest dreams had you imagined you would never see them ever again.

Since the onslaught of Troll kind, you often pondered what their fate was. You like to think the two of them were together, enjoying video games, or knitting in some kind of lighthearted competition to make the better scarf- _something_ fun and not alone, and then vaporized instantly instead of being two of the many citizens on the outlying coasts to drown and be slaughtered in merciless fashions.

You miss Bro. You miss Rose. And even though she was always stealing your hair gel as a kid, you miss Roxy a fuckton. 

It’s a good thing you removed Blueberry’s noose a long time ago, because he doesn’t need any more help getting the imaginary breath squeezed out of him.

The clack clack of her boot lets you know that Terezi has walked up to the door, but even though you hold your breath waiting for her to enter, she never does. She just kind of waits there for a few minutes and then you can hear the clack clack again as she leaves towards the living room.

Staying up for so long has really drained you, and while you had started to get used to their sleeping patterns, you fall asleep in the middle of the night and don’t wake back up well into the day.

Your stomach pulls uncomfortably as you walk out to the living room and see she made herself as cozy as she could in the corner of the room. At least she had the decency to give you a blanket when you had to sleep out here.

Going back to her room and retrieving one, you carefully drape it over her sleeping form. She pulls it close to her instantly, obviously happy in sleep to have it. You sit down beside her, looking up at the newest piece of artwork adorning the walls. A teal dragon and red counterpart resting contentedly together. It’s really cool, honestly because she colors things with a very abstract theme, highlights being any color and direction they want to be. Probably whatever smells best together… or tastes best together once she’s got bored of this drawing, you suppose.

Despite having slept probably at least six hours, you decide the dragons have the right idea and yawn. Flopping over onto your back, you look over to her and decide to scoot closer. It’s nice cuddling with her, because you get to use an extra blanket, which you of course were cool enough to bring along with the blanket for her.

Eyes slipping shut as her arms snake around you automatically, you quickly fall into slumber.

~~  
~~

“Shh, it’s okay,” a reassuring voice calmly breaks through your slumber.

“What?” You ask, wondering why you’ve been woken and why you are the floor again now that you’ve been sleeping on the pile with Blueberry the last few days. Your stomach is unsettled, and you realize your cheeks are crusted with dried tears.

Groggy dread turns to startled fear as you see you’re sharing a sleeping space with a troll, but you relax as you see the bright red eyes. Your blood is still pumping in your ears, and your cheeks are probably red with embarrassment from knowing you were crying in your sleep.

“You were having a daymare,” She explains. 

Your whole body aches, and you just don’t have the energy to play it cool. Your biceps are calling out in pain in particular, each one encircled by a cold hand that is now just resting there. You assume she was probably pinning you down to keep you from flailing and hurting her or yourself. Pulling away from her, you attempt to put on a blank face and state,” I woke you up.”

She nods, then hesitates before asking,” Do you want to talk about it?”

What’s with people like Egbert and this troll? “No I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve been surviving on my own for over five years thank you. I don’t need your support and I was doing just fine when you were gone!”

“Well that’s suspiciously specific…”

“I don’t need this crap. I shouldn’t have come out here.” You exhale painfully as you try get up without too many creaking joints sounding.

“Wait, Dave. I’m sorry for thinking you were sub-sentient! It’s really hard to realize and accept you’re wrong, but I’m trying. All of troll society says humans are, but spending time with you has made me realize they’re wrong. Let’s just talk about what’s wrong like civilized people.”

“You want me to talk about what gives me night- day- whatever-mares? Fucking trolls! You decimated my whole planet, shamed the little of my species that was left by offering sadistic choices of get fed by turning in mutants or starve, and humiliated the rest by forcing us into being lesser, subservient pets or slaves.

“I lost all my family, all but one of my friends who I’ve already thought dead and mourned for seven years. I’ve had to kill to survive, and have been nearly killed so many times I lost count. It’s my fault Bro died. My fault they all died. I’m a horrible brother, and I just can’t help but feel I’m going to lose someone if I dare to start caring about them.

“I just- when I close my eyes, I’m back on Earth fighting to survive, when I should’ve really been processed and culled so long ago.” You take off your shades, your lifeline. Waving them briskly in the air as you hold them between you and this troll that you should hate but can’t manage to, you finish with,” I should be dead right now, not him, and it’s all my fault. I’ve been lonely for so long, and I feel guilty for feeling alone, because it’s my fault. Why me? Why did I survive?”

Your tears start up again, but this time you are fully conscious. You don’t care anymore. You just want to know why out of so many humans, a worthless coward like you survived.

“I’m sorry,” she manages quietly. She moves closer, gauging your reaction before pulling you into a hug. You drop the sunglasses emotionlessly as you will your apathy to come back. You bottom lip quivers, and you give up on the cool kid act. It’s nice to be embraced. You can pretend you are loved again even if you don’t deserve it.

“You don’t have to be lonely anymore, I’ll always come back.”

You don’t know why, but this is what sets you off from tears to outright bawling. You haven’t cried like this in years, and while it’s embarrassing, it feels really good to let it out.

You can’t imagine how this will change your relationship with her. She’s fully admitted you are sentient, and you’ve pretty much bared your soul. Tomorrow could be really awkward, but you remain optimistic this might just be a turning point onto something really good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updated a few days early on account of it being a certain someone's birthday ;) 
> 
> hope you all enjoyed it!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra long chapter since I've kept you all waiting. Expect a small helping of feels, some heartwarming moments, and just general weirdness. Hope you enjoy this installment of Crimson!

You’re sitting and watching her draw. She’s abusing the poor red chalk to a stub too small to use, but the purple piece remains suspiciously untouched. The rest of the chalk has fair wear and tear, but orange is suspiciously wet.

You’ve just woken up yourself, how you managed to outsleep her after your solid six hours before cuddling, you don’t know. She hasn’t mentioned last day- ugh that just sounds so awkward. Last night is so much easier to say- but she also hasn’t really acknowledged you passed “good night, sleep well?” 

She knows how you slept, she’s the one who soothed you for almost an hour as you bawled your eyes out like a babe... or maybe she compared you to a grub, if she even remembers what it’s like to be one, since apparently trolls don’t interact with their young. You still can’t get over that.

Your head and sinuses feel really clear from the sheer fuck ton you cried, but your eyes are still a little puffy. You guess you kept her up most of the day, because you can tell dark bags are under her eyes and hiding behind her glasses, when she looks up at the top of her current work in progress. This makes you feel a little bad, she’s injured and shit. Like, she needs maximum rest right now or something.

You are going to share your appreciation through song. Setting a solid beat, you quickly descend into freestyle,”

_yo dog, don’t wanna bog,_  
you down, but I thought I should say,  
you’ve made my day, in this twisted place where night is right for play,  
really came through when time came due,  
was feeling really blue until you,  
a gorgeous seer of mind,  
could tell I’s in a bind,  
guess who- it’s you,  
even if you ain’t gotta’ clue,  
on insulting folk,  
but that’s fine and dandy  
makes me-”

“What are you doing,” She asks as she turns to face you.

“Rapping, duh,” You reply before starting to feel the beat again in your fingers. You’ve got to establish rhythm or the whole piece will just be a disaster. This particular masterpiece is set at about a medium walking pace, with a strong emphasis on beats two and four. You hope it’s not stale, but you haven’t really had time to rap much over the last year, and even before that you felt you were stuck in 2009.

With strong eyebrow game as she examines you like you’re an alien (go figure), she clarifies,” You mean slam poetry?”

“Well if you knew what it was, why’d you ask,” You respond, rolling your eyes.

“That wasn’t very burning for sick fires,” She comments.

Crossing your arms, you explain,” Rapping is an artform to express how you feel. Sometimes you feel like the other needs some ice for the burn you’re about to lay, and sometimes…” You fidget, and force yourself to finish,” sometimes it’s to express gratitude when you’ve been like a kid in the checkout line that’s been asking for the damn m&ms for a goddamn four minutes and while you have a valid point of ‘I haven’t been fed in nineteen hours, oh my god, bro just buy the fucking m&m's’ and they break down and do and you just really want to let the other know how much it means to you.”

You have really got to work on that rambling thing where you just keep talking until you end up trying to add a metaphor, and like maybe it might make as much sense as carrying twenty dollars in one $10, $5, and five $1s so you have correct change for any occasion that leaves out coins, but kind of unravels halfway through into a completely unorthodox route that leaves you wondering why you would bring change like that in the first place after the world deconstructed into bartering.

She bites her lip carefully by the roughed up skin, her ridiculously sharp teeth drawing more attention than completely necessary. Her eyes scrunch up from how wide a smile takes up residence on her face. Some tears might have collected in her eyes, but you’re not sure since she latches her arms around you and buries her face into your chest.

You weren’t expecting this reaction, but it feels pretty good to let your chin nestle between her horns and put your arms around her too, while neither of you are having an emotional crisis. It lasts for a bit, you two just sitting there in each other’s arms.

“...Dave?” The hesitant mumble quivers against your collarbone. 

“Yeah?”

“I really hope we can be like this more.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” You agree. This shouldn’t feel as right as it does, you acknowledge. You’re starting to think that your joking of stockholm syndrome wasn’t completely a joke, but maybe actually affecting you. Maybe though, maybe you actually just plain like her, and you two were put in the wrong worlds or the wrong universe, and were busy trying to right what was wrong this whole time.

You’re going to give yourself a headache if you try to philosophize this hard. Which is to say, if you try at all, because you are no tentacle therapist.

Eventually she breaks away. Holding out a hand, she leads you to the wall she had been drawing on and shares her chalk. You haven’t drawn in a very long time, and you aren’t sure you’re ready to bring back Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. When you think of your webcomic, you think of Bro. You were trying to emulate him when you started it up. 

Afraid to break some unspoken rule, you avoid the purple chalk and decide orange is a nice substitute for the last stripe of the rainbow you’re drawing. Two orange lines is good anyways. Artistic license. You’re original- next comes a star.

You look over at her new work she’s scratching out. It’s kind of pathetic how small the red piece is now. You notice that her pile of chalk she has here is definitely more than one set of chalks with three forest greens of various sizes hanging out by your feet. Not a single red piece has survived.

“Hey, Cool Kid, is this you?” She giggles, pointing to her half drawn portrait.

“Why is my nose on my cheek,” You ask with mock irritation.

She just cackles and starts drawing a new portrait. You of course respond by trying to draw her like Pablo Picasso, and soon the whole wall is covered in drawings, many smeared in her attempt to know just how distorted your drawing was, of twisted and confused blonde humans and teal blooded trolls who are equally contorted. None of them look like you two, but it was a great deal of fun.

~~  
~~

Life has a strange way of continuing and completely ignoring monumentus changes. For instance, you and Terezi haven’t really fought since your feelings jam. You’ve learned to compromise before either of you break into hysterics. She’s taking you shopping tonight so you can pick out clothing more your style. And tomorrow she’s promised to take you to see John again.

You agreed to wear the collar so long as she disarms the chokey death thing. She had to use a search engine- probably Troll Google- to figure out how, but she made it happen. It’s embarrassing to wear the collar, but following the law gives Terezi peace of mind, and apparently that started mattering to you more than your dignity at some point.

When she opens the door to the outside world, you tense up like before. It’s still so surreal to see trolls going about their nightly business even though you’ve got to know Terezi.

You wonder how many trolls are like Terezi, or if most of them really are like how you’ve imagined them all this time- blood thirsty killers. Your troll snickers as you pull close to her, really hiding behind her from an anxiety attack because it should be against the law to condense this many trolls into one area. You’d feel so much better if you had a weapon. Even a dinky knife.

It’s a fairly long walk to reach downtown, and by the time you’ve made it to Human Depot, you’re thinking tennis shoes will be your first priority. You’ve known the value of good, supporting shoes for a long time now. Who needs fashionable shoes when you need to hike 10 miles for your first meal in three days or run from a troll for hours on end?

She takes you through the aisles, and it’s hard to pick out clothing. It’s been so long since you had the opportunity at new clothes. You find yourself checking for bullet holes and gashes that will reduce the durability of the cloth. You and your Bro had a strict rule of only taking what you need, and only take from those who don’t need it. You keep expecting to look around and see the corpse that justified stealing. It was a gross way to get the necessities of life, but a culled human didn’t need cans of corn.

“Where’s the fitting room?” You ask as you hold up a pair of black pants to your waist.

“There isn’t one. This is a pet store.”

“Well then, I guess I’ll reveal the legend here.”

You were expecting a horrified gasp of embarrassment, or a quick reprimand, definitely not,” Mmm, more vanilla ice cream.”

You don’t know how to respond to that besides blush madly and shove your legs hastily into the pants. They fit well, and you assume that more of the same size will fit just fine so you don’t have to try on any more. Good, because with how hot your face is, you don’t know you’d survive that again.

She leans in and licks your cheek. “And strawberry topping. Delicious.”

You blue screen of death at that until you can recover enough to shuffle through more clothes.

She has to urge you to pick out more than just one outfit. It’s so hard to spend money, even if- especially if it’s not your own. You learned early on that Bro was working his ass off and only bringing in enough to keep life going almost comfortably. There would be a month here and there with no electricity, and you wanted to help so bad, but he wouldn’t let you get a job until you were fourteen. No protest of fact that he did exactly that could convince him otherwise. 

That was why you started up a webcomic like your Bro did, with a shiny DONATE bar at the top and bottom of the page. It helped with groceries at least.

Terezi’s holding a jacket up and asking about it, and you realize you were too lost in the past to listen. “What?” You ask, trying to play it cool like you just didn’t care enough the first time to listen.

“I said, I thought this tasted nice with those pants.”

How on Earth/Delta-system/whatever-the-fuck did you zone out enough to miss her licking at your legs? You wonder about yourself sometimes.

You look at the jacket, it’s a more of a suit jacket than a practical one, which kind of clashes with the canvas of the pants that you refuse to take off now. However, it is kind of nice, with lime green stripe subtly threaded in. You rub the sleeve between your fingers and find it feels kind of like felt.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” You agree simply. She’s acquired a small basket in your absentminded episode, and she’s already filled it with mostly black clothing in the sizes you’ve deemed right. Some teal articles have found their way in there, along with some red, but trolls seem to value black more than royalty does purple.

You look around and notice the store is pretty segregated into strict bunches of colors. They must follow the hemospectrum. You guess it’s not kosher to dress your pet in the color of another blood than your own, but red must be a free for all. You think that’s stupid, so you grab a yellowish-orange sweatshirt and say,” How about this?” It has a puffball of a feather boa at the collar.

Her lips just curl and she coos,” The color of my moirail. I didn’t know you liked him so much.”

Narrowing your eyes in defeat, you proceed to walk down the color blocks and grab something from each other distinct group. Burgundy kilt, brown scarf, olive coat, jade hat, blue thigh high socks, you consciously skip that same dark purple that drips from people’s mouths in your daymares, violet pajamas with a moon design, and a fuchsia belt… Shoving the small collection of clashing garments into her arms, you smile pleased with yourself.

“I can’t wait to smell you wearing all of this. You’ll be even worse than her condescension in her youth.”

You make your way to the registers, trying to force down the guilt of adding so much extra to her bill as they start to total it up. You don’t know the currency, but 32,488 seems like a lot even in anime money. Terezi says nothing and just hands over her card. You don’t know if her lack of response is from simply not caring, or if it’s because she can’t get a clear sniff of the numbers.

The troll that rang up the order looks nonplussed as she bags the onslaught of rainbow colors. Terezi smiles like nothing culturally amiss has taken place here, and takes the bags before leading you back out into streets. You instantly miss the almost dead store as a troll pushes passed you, his sharp claws pressing against your chest until you fall back into Terezi.

He is stopped by Terezi’s cane from going any further. You realize the cane has become a spear of sorts. With the point of the cane pressing against his jugular, she hisses,” Why don’t you watch who you’re shoving?”

“It’s fine, really,” You mumble under your breath. No need to piss off the giant and make a scene. You want to go back to her home in one piece.

“Funny coming from you; you’re blind, aren’t you?” The troll sneers, lowering his horns that are shaped like pitchforks.

With careful precision, Terezi slices horizontally, sure to pierce the skin but careful not to draw too much blood. He bristles, but she keeps him locked in place with her unseeing stare. Slowly bringing the spear back so she can lick the point gingerly, she smirks and says,” Pretty shade of bronze. I wouldn’t mind horribly if I had to eviscerate you.”

Bumps raise on your skin, and not even him grudgingly backing away soothes your anxious feeling. She was having fun playing dress up and being charitable only seconds ago, and now she’s threatening to disembowel a guy. You have conflicted feelings.

The two of you drew quite a scene, but she acts like nothing out of the blue happened as she tugs your arm forwards. Back in your familiar arrangement of being arm candy, she locates her next destination.

You almost ask if she’s for sure as she leads you into a computer store because really? That would be fan-fucking-tastic! You were mostly kidding you think, back when you were showing off your skills at being an emotional dipshit. You really would like to get some of the luxuries of civilization back, and historically increased communication has always been the push for groups to fight for their rights.

Your rush of positive feelings is stepped on with cleats as the store welcomer points to a sign and says,” No pets allowed.”

Terezi takes this in stride and casually responds,” He’s my seeing-eye human. They’re all the rage on the Gamma system of colonies.”

The other troll doesn’t seem to know how to react, like whether that nullifies the pethood status or not. Finally coming to a conclusion, the yellow blood replies,” Really? I didn’t know that… Um… Proceed.”

You feel kind of special that Terezi consciously broke a rule for you and even lied to do it. No matter how hard you try, upon seeing all the computers, you kind of geek like a young child walking into Disneyland. Not that you know what that’s like or will ever get to. 

So computers were never really your thing. You like weird dead stuff and irony way better, but you were good with them, and you spent a lot of time on them. You had to know your way around them to get the sickest (and illegally free) new programs installed and working to turn out your sick rhymes and superb comics. Computers became your thing, and then your life when your best friendships grew online. You’re so psyched.

You find out that her moirail had coached her on what to look for, and so picking out the winning laptop is pretty painless. It wouldn’t be so bad except reading specs in trollian really wears on the eyes. It’s not exactly a language made with small typing in mind.

Your night putting on the ritz was surprisingly enjoyable. You’re starting to get used to entering troll society. You might even tap dance. 

It’s pretty cute as you arrive back home- since when did this become home- and she’s fighting to stay awake at the break of day. You’re sitting in the living room trying to draw with her, but she keeps nodding off. The sun seems almost stronger than warm milk for drowsiness inducing capability. It probably doesn’t help that she had been at work for a solid ten hours before taking you out for a shopping spree.

Despite her silent protests that she wants to stay up with you- you have a really hard time sleeping at daytime still- you lead her to her room and ease her onto her pile. Restless but wanting to cuddle, you find Blueberry and squeeze him tight as you force yourself to stay mostly still. 

You’ve taken to being the little spoon so you can avoid horns to the face, and she’s taken to wearing red nail polish. That way when you wake up with a foggy mind but acutely aware a troll has you in their grip, you can look at the red nails and know you’re safe.

It’s these little things that make you question your future and how you’re going to explain to Egbert that his crushing on a troll is suddenly not all that weird to you.


End file.
